by Sarra Cannon
Crash swiveled in his chair and locked eyes with her, smiling. “I know this is going to sound crazy, but I don’t actually know how it works,” he said. “The city lost power, but mine stays on.”
“Why?” Parrish asked.
Karmen rummaged through her pack, looking for her cell phone and charger. She knew the phone lines weren’t really working these days, but all her music was on that phone. She might as well enjoy the power while they had it, no matter how they’d come by it.
Crash shrugged. “Because I tell it to?”
Karmen stopped, her arms erupting in goose-bumps. “Because you tell it to? What the hell do you mean by that? You’re communicating with the electricity?”
Any other day, she might have rolled her eyes and thought he had a few screws loose, but the world was freaking upside down. Dead humans walking around biting people. Parrish’s glowing sword. Noah’s ability to lift those desks back in the office building as if they weighed nothing. Her voice somehow reaching inside the mind of those things and telling them what to do. None of it made sense.
“Maybe,” he said. “I can’t explain it, but I have some sort of connection with all things electrical. The same way I was able to talk to you through that walkie-talkie back at the rescue site.”
“You’re telling me that you’re somehow powering this entire apartment with your, what? Your will?” Her voice came out more bitter and biting than she’d intended. She hated that tone of voice, even if it was her own. She hated the way she sounded, like she was better than everyone. But she couldn’t control it.
“Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m saying,” Crash said. She expected him to be harsh in response to her questions, but instead he seemed amused. “After all you’ve seen, is it really so hard to believe?”
“What about these?” Noah asked, gesturing to the computers. He’d just come out of the shower and was drying his hair with a towel. Fortunately, he hadn’t bothered to put his shirt back on. “Can you still get on the internet?”
“Yep,” Crash said, turning to the computers and jiggling his mouse to wake them up. Six screens lit up, filled with everything from maps to pictures to some kind of running code Karmen couldn’t understand. She felt like she’d walked into a scene from The Matrix. “I know it sounds crazy, but I’ve been able to hack into any security system in the world the past few days. Any information we need, I can get.”
Karmen was going to ask him what he knew about the army and any safe zones, but Parrish cut her off.
“What do you know about New York?” she said.
Karmen’s stomach twisted. It was sweet that Parrish was still thinking about her little sister in New York, but come on. They’d barely survived the trip to D.C. There’s no way they were making it to New York City, even if Zoe was still alive by some miracle.
Crash frowned. “Why?”
“My sister’s there,” Parrish said.
Crash sighed. “It’s a nightmare in New York,” he said, sorrow in his tone. “I’m sorry, but the roads and bridges in and out of Manhattan are blocked by miles of cars. Just like here, a lot of people thought they could get out in time to save their families, but by the time they started to flee the area, the National Guard had already set up a quarantine of the city. No one could get in or out. Once the infected rose from the dead, the people still alive in the city were—”
“Zoe’s alive,” Parrish interrupted. “I talked to her.”
“That was days ago,” Karmen said.
Parrish spun toward her, anger in her eyes. “She’s alive.” She turned back to Crash. “She was staying with our dad at the Four Seasons. I talked to her on the hotel’s land-line before our cell service stopped working a few days back. I told her to gather as much food and water as she could and barricade herself in the room. I told her I’d come get her.”
Noah moved to put a hand on Parrish’s shoulder and a look passed between them. Very touching.
Karmen didn’t stay to hear the rest of the conversation. If Parrish still wanted to go to New York, she could go, but Karmen was staying put as long as she could. She wasn’t about to go out on some suicide mission just to save someone who was probably already dead.
Plus, she still hadn’t totally come to terms with the budding romance between Noah and Parrish. Sure, Karmen had dated some of his friends throughout the years, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t interested in him. She’d always felt a connection to him she couldn’t explain, and she’d spent more than a little time daydreaming what it would be like to kiss him. But he’d always had mooney eyes for Parrish.
Of course it was just her luck that when the end of the world came, she was stuck with the two of them instead of Noah by himself. If they’d never teamed up with Parrish, he and Karmen might be safely snuggling at his house right now. It wasn’t fair.
She wandered into the hallway to look around at the rest of the apartment. There was a tiny little bathroom on the right with nothing more than a toilet, a sink, and a shower. No bathtub, not that she’d dare take a bath in this dirty place.
A bedroom about half the size of hers back home had three sleeping bags spread on the floor. There was no other furniture in the room, but the walls were stacked with bottles of water. There had to be three hundred bottles in here. Damn, this kid wasn’t kidding when he said he’d been preparing for them.
Karmen walked down to the end of the hall. This place was really small and dark. It might be enough room for the five of them for a few days, but how long were they planning to stay here? She wasn’t sure she could survive months in such a small space. They’d end up killing each other within a week.
There was one more bedroom at the end of the hall, smaller than the other one, with a twin bed on the floor. There was a stack of books sitting on top of a grey milkcrate beside the bed. Was this Crash’s bedroom?
Karmen glanced back toward the living room and when she saw no one was paying attention to her, she slipped into the room. She sat on the bed and picked up a couple of the books. Most of them were about coding and gaming, but her hand lingered on a tattered ear-marked copy of The Catcher in the Rye.
She inhaled and held the breath inside as she picked up the book. The cover was so worn, it practically fell apart in her hands. More than fifty pages had been marked and there were underlined passages all through the book.
Karmen held the book against her heart and looked around the room, seeing things differently now. She’d first read this book when she was fourteen, and the copy she’d picked up at the bookstore a few years ago looked about like this one, marked up and read a hundred times.
Was it possible she actually had something in common with Crash?
She didn’t tell many people she was a reader. Most of her friends liked to talk about boys and TV shows and movies. Music. Never books. That was more the kind of thing she used to talk to Parrish about. But the truth was that Karmen loved to read more than anything.
Sometimes, when things got too hard to handle and the truth of her own life seemed too overwhelming to think about, she lost herself in books, imagining she could step inside and be the main character instead of herself for a while.
The Catcher in the Rye was one of the first books that made her think that maybe she wasn’t as alone in this world as she thought. Maybe there were other hopeless people out there who felt like their lives were full of nothing but pretend people and constant lies.
She stared down at the book, wondering what passages meant the most to Crash. And why?
“What’s up?”
Karmen jumped and dropped the book to the floor. She stood quickly and straightened her shoulders.
“Sorry, I was just…” She looked around and shrugged, not really sure how to explain what she was doing other than being nosy.
“No problem,” Crash said. “Mi casa es su casa, or however that goes.”
He crossed the room to her and came so close, it made her heartbeat race a little. He bent over and grabbed the book fr
om the floor.
“Do you read?” he asked, holding the book toward her.
Karmen inhaled, part of her wanting to tell him that yes, she loved to read. She wanted to ask him about The Catcher in the Rye and why he’d made so many marks inside.
But instead, she shrugged and pushed past him toward the door.
“Not really,” she said. She started to leave the room, but something made her turn back. “Do you?”
Crash’s eyes met hers and he smiled. He looked down at the tattered paperback in his hands and nodded. “I love to read,” he said. “Sometimes it’s just nice to lose yourself, you know?”
She nodded once, but felt the ice around her heart starting to melt. It scared the crap out of her.
She didn’t even know this guy. She didn’t need to go spilling her secrets. Not after a lifetime of hiding them so well.
“I gotta go,” she said, turning around so fast she nearly knocked herself out on the edge of the doorframe. She stumbled into the hallway and made a beeline to the bathroom where she closed herself inside and waited for her hands to stop trembling.
So these are the guardians.
The young witch looked at the four kids in the room. They were just children, really. Hard to believe they had each lived more than a dozen lifetimes. It was obvious none of them remembered anything from their past, which was good. The Dark One would be pleased to know that they were unaware of the true origin of this so-called virus. As long as these children were still trying to figure out what was going on in their world, the Dark One was safe.
Her mistress’s powers were growing. With each death and rebirth, the Dark One’s power blossomed. With each day that went by, and each life that was taken by the virus, her mistress grew stronger. Strong enough to reanimate the dead in droves, making each one a slave and minion to her will.
Someday soon, she would be strong enough to break through the ice. Then, once they had drained every drop of life and power from this pathetic world, the two of them would return to their home world and finish what the Dark One had started centuries ago.
Complete and total domination of both sides of their world. Ice and fire.
The witch listened to the young humans talk of their newfound power.
She smiled. They knew nothing of power.
She cradled her burned hand in her lap. The Dark One had given her only a glimpse of the power she had locked inside. How was it possible these guardians had ever been strong enough to defeat her?
No, that was wrong. They hadn’t been able to defeat her. They’d merely locked the Dark One in a cage of ice and buried her here in this wasteland of a world. They’d simply delayed the inevitable, giving the Dark One centuries to formulate a plan that would unleash her wrath on this poor place. What her mistress had accomplished with the power to grow a single rose was staggering and brilliant. A single flower had brought this world to its knees before her, and all this while she was still entombed in ice.
What would she accomplish once she was free?
A shudder of anticipation ran down the witch’s spine.
It was her job to help free the Dark One, and if she proved valuable, it would be her at the Dark One’s side when she became ruler in their homeland. What would the elders have to say when they saw their little servant girl at the right hand of the most powerful witch who’d ever lived?
The witch straightened and hid her smile. All her life she’d been treated as nothing. Never even worthy of a name.
She would show them all.
And these guardians were the only ones who could stand in her way.
All she had to do was mislead them. Trick them. Keep them from discovering the truth. All she had to do was give her mistress more time.
Getting into their group had been easy enough. She’d only had to search Crash’s mind to find out what he knew about the fifth. Crash was the dreamer—the one who would always be the first to see his fellow guardians and seek them out as he slept. She knew he would be dreaming of the fifth, but for some reason, the fifth had kept his face hidden from Crash. He’d only seen glimpses of the one who was supposed to make their group complete. Because of this, he’d had no idea what the fifth looked like. It could just as easily be her as anyone else.
Making him believe it was her was simple, but keeping them from the truth would be much more difficult. Now that four of them were together, their powers would begin to increase. Their dreams would become more frequent and more detailed.
That was how the reincarnation spell worked—the guardians chose to stay here in this world to protect their people from the Dark One. With each human life, they gravitated toward one another, staying close so that if the magical seal on this world were ever broken, they would be able to find each other and work together to make sure the Dark One stayed frozen and powerless.
But their memories wouldn’t fully return until all five of them were together.
As long as she could keep them from the fifth, she would be okay. They might see images from their past or get glimpses of their true purpose, but by the time they figured it out, it would be too late for them.
She smiled again and sank deeper into the couch, watching them as they talked about the little girl in New York.
The one with the sword—Parrish—seemed intent on getting to a place called New York City to save her little sister. A very sweet notion, really. The witch had never had anyone who loved her as much as this girl seemed to love her sister. No one since Marilon.
She closed her eyes and pictured the small child’s face. Marilon had not been her real sister. The witch had no real sisters. She had no family at all except for the elders of the Council, and none of them would claim her even if they could. But Marilon had been her little angel, so pure and beautiful and small.
Warm tears welled up behind her closed lids and she shrugged them off, taking a deep breath. It would do her no good to think of the little one from so long ago. Marilon was long gone and there was no reason to think of her. Not now. Not ever.
After Marilon’s death, the witch had vowed to never love anyone again. She would never let anyone into her heart. She’d learned the hard way that loving someone was nothing but a sign of weakness.
But as she listened to them talk about New York City and the sister lost inside, the witch knew that where there was weakness, there was opportunity.
If the Dark One’s minions could get to this little one before Parrish, the sister might be of some use to them.
She needed to talk to the Dark One and give her the good news.
“Any luck finding my sister?”
Parrish finally had a quiet minute to talk to Crash, and she was dying to know if he’d made any progress getting in touch with Zoe. Earlier when she’d mentioned New York to him, he’d refused to show her any videos of the area. He didn’t want to upset her, but had promised he would look for a way to connect with Zoe’s cell phone if he could.
They’d only been at Crash’s for a few hours, so she didn’t want to bug him, but she had to know if her sister was still alive.
“I was able to locate a signal from her phone, but when I tried to ring through, nothing happened,” he said. “I think it’s just too far away. I can’t seem to connect to it. But from GPS, it looks like her phone is still at the Four Seasons, though, just like you said.”
Parrish let out a sigh of relief. That meant Zoe had listened to her and barricaded herself inside her room instead of trying to make it to a so-called safe zone. According to Crash, none of the safe-zones he’d researched had survived. Too many people pushing to get in and not enough security measures in place to tell if someone was infected or not. Especially since symptoms of the virus didn’t always show up right away. All it took was one infected person to make it inside a safe-zone and the entire population was knocked out.
But if Zoe was still in her suite at the hotel, there was still a chance she was alive.
“What about calling her room? I can’t remember th
e room number, but if you could get through, maybe someone would answer at the front desk,” Parrish said, crossing the room to stand behind Crash. There was so much information up on his giant computer screens, she couldn’t even make sense of it all.
Crash gave her a sad half-smile before turning back to his monitors. “Give me the information. I’ll try everything I can.”
Parrish bit her lower lip. She hated to think of her sister surrounded by zombies in a hotel in New York City. If their dad was already sick when she’d last talked to Zoe, Parrish knew it was foolish to hope he’d gotten better. She didn’t want to think about that. She just wanted to believe her sister was still okay.
She needed to believe it.
“Keep trying, please,” she told him. “Whatever it takes.”
Crash nodded, but she could tell from the way he looked at her that he didn’t hold out much hope of survival. “Not wasting power might be a good place to start,” he said, shooting a look at Karmen who was just coming out of the bathroom after drying her hair.
Parrish wanted to strangle her. Who brought a hair dryer with them in their backpack during the zombie apocalypse?
“Did you honestly think it was necessary to blow dry your hair?” Crash asked, an amused look on his face.
“Yes,” Karmen said, brushing imaginary dirt off the couch before sitting down. “So?”
“So, you do realize that we’re running off some kind of mystical power source that seems to be connected to my mind, right? I have no idea how long I’ll be able to keep this up, and honestly, since we’ve been running the lights and stuff nonstop, I’m starting to get a headache. We have to try to conserve power. A hair dryer is one of the worst things you could use.”
